The Seine River is on its way to becoming a legal entity to prevent its pollution

The team of the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, announced the possibility of granting the status of a legal entity to the Seine river in Paris, as this would provide a solid legal framework for its protection from pollution, the French electronic magazine "La Releve et La Peste" announced.

Legal subjectivity enables an ecosystem, through a legal representative - the state, community, citizen, to confirm its role and the need to be protected from industrial activities that threaten it - dam, power station, factory, waste water.

Based on this status of an ecosystem, in this case the Seine River, the court can impose binding or protective measures, prevent the implementation of projects - said Valerie Kabane, a legal activist who fights against the destruction of nature - "ecocide".

The initiative to declare the Seine as a legal entity originates from a new case of pollution of that river with waste water that arrived from the outskirts of Paris in the heart of the city in early September from the nearby concrete factory of the "Lafarge" group.

For Jacques Lemoine, development agent of the Interdepartmental Federation for Fisheries and Protection of the Aquatic Environment, layers of cement and other waste prove that this pollution has been going on for years.

In Sena, particles of cement and waste plastic from sacks suffocate algae and fish, sterilize the bottom, reach the sea and end up polluting the ocean.

"Lafarge", however, claims that there was a "completely exceptional incident beyond the possibility of control" and alluded to the sabotage of its plant from which waste water flowed into the Seine.

But agents of the Federal Brigade in Paris, responsible for the protection of waterways, say that fishermen have been reporting such pollution since several years ago. Therefore, it is concluded that the concrete plant itself opened the valves of its landfill to avoid the wastewater recycling process and save money.

In addition, "Lafarge" is believed to be responsible for a similar environmental violation of its other concrete factory, also on the banks of the Seine, in Paris itself, where there were protests by Extinction Rebellion activists early this year due to river and air pollution. Activists condemned the "outrageous use of concrete" and the "galloping concreting of soil" in France.

With a participation of eight percent in the generation of polluting gases that warm the climate, cement is the least ecological material, writes the French website: its production consumes large resources, it cannot be decomposed or renewed, and where it is found it destroys life.

Before the scandal with "Lafarge" became public, the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) filed a complaint with the Paris prosecutor due to "suspicion that a construction company was polluting the Seine", and the Ministry of Ecological Transition announced after the inspection that "the responsible will be criminally prosecuted".

The city government of Paris also got started, but it encountered an insurmountable problem: both concrete factories are on state land, and the City Hall is legally and administratively powerless.

Lawyer and activist Valerie Cabane, who is campaigning for the inclusion of the "crime of ecocide" in the French Constitution, said that the declaration of a river, a mountain or an entire ecosystem as a legal entity is being considered elsewhere: in Ecuador since 2008, in Bolivia since 2010, in about thirty cities in the United States, even in Uganda.

Thus, in 2017, the Parliament of New Zealand granted the Whanganui River the legal status of a person - a living being, which ended the longest litigation in the history of that country. The rights and interests of the river can thus be defended in court.

In France, this new legal idea spread enough for other initiatives to emerge. A year ago, a project was launched to create a "Parliament of the Loire River" so that the entire river ecosystem, including fauna, flora, banks, sand, water and all components of the Loire, could be defended in court. That parliament will hold its third session this month in Orléans.

The association "Id.eau" recently launched the "Appeal for the Rhône" - a collective mobilization aimed at granting legal personality to the river, all the way from its source under the Swiss glacier, to its mouth in the French delta, in order to allow the river to be "protected from destructive activity". There are similar programs in Dromo and Jura.

While the city administration of Paris has a lot of work to do because it cannot give legal subjectivity to Sena, it is necessary for Mayor Hidalgo's team to order an analytical work and explore the possibilities that this matter could pass either through a regional agreement, or through a national decision, a law, said Cabane. .

Since the Seine flows through a number of cities and departments, only the state and parliament are authorized to make such a decision, and only if the city of Paris joins forces with other municipalities and associations, the discussion could reach the Assembly.

If rivers, mountains, meadows and all other elements of nature were legal entities, one could directly act against industrial facilities, highways or real estate projects, and the court would have very good leverage to stop all activities that destroy the environment.

However, Kabane said, "people's economic and other interests are the most represented in the laws. For this reason, the judge will most often choose to favor them."

"Today, the ecosystem exists only as a kind of photograph, only in this moment, but it is never observed in a long time, never in terms of its role for long-term life. Understanding that the Seine is a watercourse and that water is life, that we are dependent on it and dependent on the ecosystem, that's the whole philosophy behind the idea of ​​the river as a legal entity," Kabane told the website "La Releve et La Peste".